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Last Updated: 4:48 AM GMT on September 01, 2009
— Last Comment: 1:11 PM GMT on November 08, 2009
Yesterday evening, I was stung by a bee.
I'd just fed the horses and cat and was heading out the barn door, when I felt sudden, searing pain in my big toe. I looked down and saw a disheveled-looking bee climb out of my sandal and roll around in death throes on the dirt floor of the barn. Its stinger was still in my skin. Oh, &%@!#^&! I grabbed a small piece of wood (a ply from a nearby piece of rotting plywood), and flicked the barbed stinger out of my toe. Then I headed into the house for baking soda therapy.  The sting of a honey bee. The barbed stinger stays in the skin after the bee leaves, resulting in the insect's death. Photo by Waugsberg. I don't quite remember who showed me how to treat bee stings with a thick slurry of baking soda and water, but I remain thankful to whoever it was. As a physician's daughter, I was taught that home remedies don't work very well in general. But baking soda works WONDERFULLY when applied to fresh bee stings. It's not going to be of much use to people with serious bee sting allergies -- those people need a speedy epinephrine injection and a trip to the emergency room -- but it's great for those of us that simply want to minimize pain and swelling. First, a short trip down memory lane... I earned much of my spending money babysitting neighborhood children when I was a teenager back in the 1970's. A 3-year-old girl that I'll call "C" was one of my regular customers. One sunny day, C's back porch play session was rudely interrupted. She ran to me, shrieking and clawing at her shirt. "A bee! A bee! Help! It hurts!" My heart stopped when I pulled off her little shirt and saw a big, black wasp fly out of it. C had been stung 3 times, twice on the chest and once on the shoulder! The stings must have been excruciating. (Wasp stings rank high on both the Starr Sting Scale and the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.) So I grabbed the baking soda, mixed a slurry and plastered it on -- and within a minute or two, little C stopped screaming. "That feels good," she sniffled, tears coursing down her cheeks. I've been a believer in the baking soda treatment ever since. I'll start by saying that I'm not 100 percent sure why baking soda works so well. Even after Googling all over the web today, I haven't been able to find a definitive explanation. My guess is that it counteracts the formic acid in the sting while acting as a poultice, drawing the poison out -- but I'm not an expert. What I do know is that it really, really works. Even if you don't believe me, try it. You have nothing to lose except a painful experience.  Drizzling a slurry of baking soda and water on the toe with the bee sting. The consistency of the mixture is important; thicker or thinner is much less effective. After mixing the slurry and applying it to the sting, wait for it to dry. It'll be messy, so put down newspaper or otherwise be ready for cleanup duty. (I still need to vacuum up the baking soda that I tracked all over the house last night.) Pick off the dried baking soda, reapply, and repeat until the sting stops hurting. You can also add ice, antihistamine and/or acetaminophen/ibuprofen to your treatment regimen. I am happy to say that my bee sting is barely noticeable today. There's no swelling, only the slightest bit of redness, and a tiny puncture wound where I dislodged the stinger. I'm sure my quick recovery was due, at least in part, to the baking soda treatment. Most of the stings I receive are from yellow jackets or wasps, not bees. Mr. Pilot and I like bees, both European honey bees and native bumblebees, and we do everything we can to encourage them to visit our home. Bees pollinate crops and are Gentle Good Guys most of the time. In contrast, yellow jackets are aggressive meat eaters that do not pollinate anything. The insect that stung me last night was a normally-docile honey bee that got trapped in my sandal and panicked. Hence, the stinger left in my toe. Yellow jackets do not have barbs on their stingers, so they can, and do, sting repeatedly. True bees don't sting very frequently, and they die after using their stinger once.  A busy wasp nest in the eaves of our garage. Note that wasps are NOT bees -- in fact, they kill honey bees. Mr. Pilot will clear out this nest tonight, after dark. Yellow jackets are pests, and they're EVERYWHERE around here in the summer. They build nests in the eaves of our house and outbuildings, in trees, in brush piles, even in the ground. When the weather gets really dry (like it is now), they congregate around water sources. My poor horses and outdoor cats have to battle them for access to their water. And yes, they do get stung occasionally.  Yellow Jackets floating in my horses' water tank. The tank is swarmed by yellow jackets, wasps and hornets on hot, dry days. Every evening, I turn on the water til the tank overflows. Overflowing the tank cleans it, as the flowing water carries out the yellow jacket bodies and daily debris left by the horses. I'll upload some pictures of our homemade Yellow Jacket traps later.  Create your own visitor map!
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